Fri 11:33pm: Nursing home says it won't take 'brain-dead' girl

December 27, 2013

OAKLAND, Calif. - A San Francisco Bay Area nursing home that had agreed to provide long-term care for a 13-year-old Oakland girl declared brain dead has backed out.

The facility, which has not been named, withdrew after the Children's Hospital Oakland, where Jahi McMath is now on a ventilator, refused to insert the breathing and feeding tubes necessary for her long-term care.

"We lost the facility that we were originally going to go with," said Omari Sealey, Jahi's uncle and the family's spokesman.

Sealey said they are now in talks with three other nursing homes - two in Los Angeles and one in New York - that may be willing to take her.

A lawyer for Children's Hospital Oakland said in a letter made public today that before the hospital would comply with the family's request to move Jahi, it would need to speak directly with officials at any nursing home to make sure they understand her condition, "including the fact that Jahi is brain dead" - and to discuss needed preparations, including transportation.

Lawyer Douglas Straus also said the Alameda County coroner needs to sign off on the move "since we are dealing with the body of a person who has been declared legally dead."

"Children's Hospital will of course continue to do everything legally and ethically permissible to support the family of Jahi McMath. In that regard, Children's will allow a lawful transfer of Jahi's body in its current state to another location if the family can arrange such a transfer and Children's can legally do so," Straus wrote in the letter.